Book Review: The Book of Mormon (!?)

Written on Thursday 31 December 2009

Last night, in an attempt to rectify my broken sleep patterns, I sought out the most dull work of fiction in the house so that I could bore myself to sleep. My choice, understandably one might think, was the Book of Mormon, which we got from a couple of missionaries for the price of two cups of coffee and half an hour of pretending to care.

Unfortunately, it seems that I was wrong about the boredom. It’s now the next day, and I actually want to read more. Wrapped up in 0 AD Judeo-Christian “and so it came to pass” rubbish is a story which could happily be renamed “Nephi’s Swashbuckling Adventure” and turned into at least a third-rate movie. So far, in the first twenty pages or so: Nephi and his dad have had visions from God and been banished from Jerusalem, but have snuck back in to grab some loot. When his brother tries to pay the bad guy for the loot they want, the bad guy beats him up and sends henchmen after him. So Nephi sneaks in, finds the bad guy drunk, kills him with his own sword after arguing with God, then steals the guy’s armour too. Once in the bad guy’s armour, everyone mistakes Nephi for the bad guy, so he makes off with the loot and one of the bad guy’s servants too, who I choose to believe is a ninja butler.

Being horribly religious and thus male-centric there’s been a distinct lack of buxom wenches so far, but apparently in the next chapter they sail to America, so who knows, there might be pirates!